Here’s the thing - science and observation of the various facets of reality don’t prove atheism to be correct. They merely fail to support the wild claims that theists make. So while you can sort of say that the question of whether there’s a god sprawls into every subject under the sun, what’s actually happening is that theists are attempting to claim that every subject under the sun supports their beliefs, and other people are looking at the subject, then the claims, then the subjects, then pushing their glasses up on their noses and saying “nope”.
This is not an active proof of atheism. It’s not even really a disproof of theism - it only disproves the theists when they make false claims about observable reality. Eradicating those false claims disproves some versions of some gods, sure - any god who is described as having created mankind by molding them out of mud does not exist as described. But there are myriad possible gods that are not disproven.
And here’s the part you’re missing: just because they haven’t been disproven, doesn’t mean we have to believe in them. You say that when discussing atheism, it is probably unavoidable to talk about the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. This is wrong. A significant number of atheists don’t claim to have knowledge or justification or rationalization for their core belief in the first place! They have justifications for not believing the claims of theists, but the only reason they have for disbelieving in all possible gods is basically because the claims sound silly or unimportant.
You could claim that you believe in a deity that is watching everything but which never does anything (except masturbate). I would tell you that I don’t believe in such a deity. You could ask me why I don’t, and I would shrug and say I have no reason to. You could ask to try and disprove it, and I would tell you I don’t feel like it. You could tell me that because I haven’t disproven it that I must believe it, and you’d be wrong.
Seriously, when you say that the reasonableness of atheism depends upon the overall adequacy of a whole conceptual and explanatory description of the world, this is correct - if gods actually existed, and were like walking around and high fiving people and stuff, then atheism would be pretty silly because the world would disprove it. But the absence of evidence of gods is not evidence of the absence of (non-interventionist) gods. Nobody has evidence of the absence of non-interventionist gods; no science provides proof of such a belief, and yet we hold it just the same. (Pending new evidence, anyway. Good evidence, that is.)
Your “proof” has more holes in it than swiss cheese. LOL
Pretty much the entire universe is uninhabitable by humans … RIGHT NOW.
What science has really shown us is that we have made amazing scientific strides in a very short time. The Dark Age was a mere 700 years ago when we had virtually no technology at all. At the current pace of development, it’s hard to even imagine the technology we may have at our disposal a mere thousand years from now. It may very well include a form of propulsion that will make interstellar travel a reality.
You’re critiquing a “book” that is very far from being written. If the universe is indeed over 12 billion years old, and if a God exists who is timeless, then His plans are most likely over a time span that you can’t possibly even imagine much less analyze.
Actually, I think we atheists need to revive Discordianism, which embraces contradiction and disarray as necessary components of chaos, so the less sense it makes, the better.
Discordianist doctrine holds that every single man, woman, and child on this Earth is a Discordian Pope. The Principia Discordia includes an official pope card that may be reproduced and distributed freely to anyone and everyone. Papacy, however, is not granted through possession of this card; it merely informs people that they are “a genuine and authorized Pope” of Discordia. So, in lieu of the card, everybody reading this thread is now a Discordian Pope, or at least finally comes to awareness of this.
I previously said this was correct, but then I revisited it, considered what you seemed to mean, and decided that you’re actually wrong.
“A whole conceptual and explanatory description of the world” - that means to know literally everything, right? To have an explanatory description of how the laws of physics work, why the republicans do what they do, and the state of North Korea’s nuclear program. That’s what you’re saying a person has to know before they can neglect to believe in every god ever theorized, right? (Or maybe just your favorite variant of the Christian God - I’m not sure if you’re still hewing to Pascal’s wager or not.)
I dispute this. I don’t have to know your underwear size before I’m allowed to be inactive in the theology department. The default state is to not believe in things - by default you haven’t heard about them, and thus can’t possibly believe in them. This being the case it’s impossible for there to be prerequisites for not believing in other people’s crazy ideas. That’s, well, a crazy idea. And it’s an idea that I certainly didn’t believe by default before now.
Well, for the most part, we don’t - because, for the most part, atheists don’t socialize with people specifically because they’re atheist. Speaking personally, I don’t have a single social context in which I can state confidently that I even know the religious inclinations of most of the people present. I’ve precisely one friend whom I know, for a fact, is an atheist. I’ve got one friend who, based on her Facebook posts, is into some form of New Age spiritualism, but I don’t know the specifics, or how deeply she believes in it. The rest of my friends, I can at best make educated guesses, and those guesses are largely based on the fact that none of them talk about religion much.
So, if I’m in the process of sharing values and beliefs expressed by atheist symbols and narratives in patterns of thought, I must be doing an incredibly shit job at it, because I don’t even know if the people I’m sharing these values with are also atheists or not.
How many people consider these as facts rather than possibilities, or even probabilities? There are lots of good reasons for them, which does not mean anyone thinks they are facts.
As for who these people are, in college I was in a science fiction club with a guy who no doubt thinks aliens are a possibility. He became a priest and now works for the Vatican as an astronomer. This debate is quite independent of religion, except for religions who think that the universe is an illusion created by god to make it look like the universe is not 6,000 years old.
I’ve read lots of philosophy on atheism by theists who do not understand it and do not want to understand it. This example is a nice illustration of trying to evade the burden of proof. Atheists do not need a consistent world view. An atheist can believe that the Earth was created naturally, but an atheist could also think that the Earth was build by Seymour the Cosmic Construction guy. (Or Slarty.) Atheist tend to accept the Big Bang and other things demonstrated to a reasonable degree of certainty by science, but they don’t have to. An atheist can just say “I don’t believe you” to any theist attempted demonstration of a god, or the atheist can give scientific and logical reasons why the “proof” of a god doesn’t hold water.
Trying to force atheists to answer the types of questions in the passage is common but still invalid.
A theist needs to define the god they believe in and give evidence for it. The best evidence in the past 2,000 years ago has been god of the gaps, but the gaps are vanishing.
If you were trained in atheism, you weren’t trained well.
Now I’m trying to picture what atheism training would be like. For some unknown reason I’m picturing pushups. (Which would be a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned.)
I trained my kids. When they were old enough, we went through the beginning of Genesis and I pointed out the absurdities and contradictions. We also taught them how to reason critically. Nice side effect - they two of them have 8 degrees between them, and they both make lots of money.
My point is that atheists make a social group whose members share a culture consisting of shared values and beliefs expressed by means of symbols and narratives in patterns of thought pertaining to the entire human race.
Mythical thinking is fundamental to all human beings.
Can you be more specific as to what these “symbols and narratives” are? The examples we’ve mentioned in this thread were sarcasm, in case you didn’t notice.
Of course it is. That doesn’t mean atheists have a unified mythos, like the ancient Greeks. Even if we did, it wouldn’t be the reason for our skepticism about space colonization. Belief in divine beings is not a requisite for understanding simple math. Remember, it would take 70,000+ years to reach Alpha Centauri. It doesn’t matter what “mythical thinking” we would have.
If what you’re saying is all A are B and all B are C, then why are you honing in on all A are C? It may be true, but if B is “members of the human race,” it’s kind of trivial to beat a drum about how all A are C. (And here, I suppose the most generous definition of C I could allow is "believers in a myth or myths).
Even if I grant, for the sake of argument, that “all humans are believers in a myth or myths,” do you honestly believe that there are beliefs held by atheists, that are unique to atheists, and could be used to set them apart from other “members of the human race,” beyond a simple lack in a belief in a god or gods? If so, what do you hold those beliefs to be?
Atheists no more share a common culture than theists do, and I say that as a theist myself. Just because I believe in God doesn’t mean I have shared cultural beliefs with another theistic religion. Atheism is even more diverse in thought, simply because all it requires is that someone didn’t believe in a god.
Some people try to lump in atheists with rationalism. But then there are some very woo-heavy, spiritual atheists out there. The things they have in common tend to be for other reasons than their atheism, such as their country of origin or literary tradition and such. When that is different, you get very different groups.
I reject the idea that atheism is different by being a “lack of belief” vs. “belief,” as both are the same thing. “I don’t believe in X” is the same as “I believe in no X.” But that doesn’t turn atheism into a religion. It’s just a belief that is common in many cultures and subcultures, same as theism. Calling atheism a “social group” is like calling heartburn an illness.
Your OP is talking about a certain subset of atheists. I’m pretty sure I’ve even encountered a name for them, but I’m not having luck finding the term on Google. I know it’s a subset of humanism and scientism that is specifically about space travel and colonization, but I can’t remember it. It definitely isn’t futurism, as that is a very different thing.
Let’s assume I have here a jar of marbles. Short of being able to actually open up and count its contents, or at least have some information about the likely number of marbles contained (like, who filled it and if they recall how many marbles they put in)…
Would you say you believe there are an even number of marbles in the jar?
Because you have basically set up, by your atheism example, a scenario in which, to be logically consistent, you must either a) believe there are an even number of marbles in the jar, or b) specifically and positively believe that there is NOT and even number of marbles in the jar, which amounts to c) a positive statement that you believe there is an odd number of marbles in the jar.
That’s the problem with your statement that “I don’t believe” is consistent with “I believe there is no.”
The time to believe, with any degree of confidence, whether there is either an even or an odd number of marbles in the jar is when you are provided with evidence of the even- or odd-ness of the number of marbles in the jar. Until then, you (I assume) 1) don’t know how whether the number is even or odd (are agnostic as to the even or oddness), but likely 2) also are atheistic as to both its evenness and its oddness (you don’t believe it is either, even in this very special scenario in which it must be one or the other).